as each day passes
by oceanofoswald
Summary: Stydia: Lydia dies. Stiles (literally) goes out of his (freaking) mind. BLAME SAKINA.


**a/n -** go blame **long time brother **- she also has written stydia if you want to check that out. All you gave me was angst and I don't think I even did that...soooooorry!

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><p>as each day passes<br>I sit and wonder why?  
>why you were taken<br>without a chance to say goodbye  
>and as I start thinking<br>with tears running down my cheeks  
>I think of life without you<p>

_ - Annemarie Castle_

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><p>.<p>

.

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One who is no longer themselves. Possessed by a dark spirit.

He's been there. It wasn't half as terrifying as where he is now.

.

.

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"Stiles." There's a slight buzz in his ear, a slight shadow in his vision. "STILES!"

It hits him then. The momentary silence, the calm blur, is gone.

Wet. Cold. Screams— are they his?

"STILES, WE HAVE TO GO!"

Drip. Drip. Drip.

"STILES, WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!"

What's on his hands?

"STILES, DON'T LOOK DOWN!"

He looks down.

"Stiles—"

No.

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.

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"No no no no no—" Stiles grips at her strawberry blonde locks, at her flowing floral dress, at her wrist with no pulse.

Malia tugs at his t-shirt. "Stiles, please!" She's whispering, pleading, crying. "We have to go!"

"NO!" He doesn't care that they still haven't won. He doesn't care because he has just lost.

Scott's biting harder, slashing quicker, howling louder. Scott's still fighting for them. Derek is there to help him. So is Kira. So is Sa—Peter.

They haven't seen yet.

Malia decides they can't. Survival depends on it. Survival is the only thing she's good at (and art, oddly enough). She knocks her boyfriend out. It wasn't a hard decision.

.

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She watches him as he sleeps. Watches his calm, relaxed breathing. Blissful—because he's forgotten. He's forgotten, for now. She thinks his body is letting him sleep this long because his brain is too tired, too used, too broken to handle what just happened.

What did just happen?

Stiles lost everything (except her— but she knows that won't matter, she knows it can't, not right now).

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"Did we win?" He sits up with a grunt, rubbing the back of his head. She twitches guiltily.

She wants to say yes. It is true—they beat the berserkers! But they didn't win. They definitely didn't win.

"Remember when we talked about how to break bad news to someone?" He nods with a disappointed twitch to his lips.

"We didn't win? Damn it! At least tell me we took down _some_ creepy scissorhands?"

"Stiles," he furrows his eyebrows at her low tone. "You said the best thing I could do was to just tell them. That they deserve to know, even if it breaks them."

"Well, yeah, but I don't see—"

"Lydia's dead."

The silence couldn't be louder.

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.

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Denial. That's the first stop on the road to acceptance. Stiles thinks he might stay parked. He thinks this every night. It's easier to forget. It's the only way he can sleep.

It doesn't make it easier surprisingly. He'll wake up in the morning and stretch, yawn, check the time, then he'll look at the date—and remember.

That's when it starts. The crying. The screaming. He's confused—but he knows exactly what's wrong. He's lonely—but there's a hand holding his. He's numb—but he feels everything. He's— he's—

He's every synonym of depressed and more. He doesn't feel like Stiles anymore. How could he be?

_"What the hell is a Stiles?"_

Nothing without you, Lydia.

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.

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He thought Scott's werewolf-hood was the best thing that ever happened to him. Lydia Martin _noticed_ him. Lydia Martin _smiled_ at him. Lydia Martin _kissed_ him. Lydia Martin—

_"Lydia's dead."_

No.

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He can't— he just— he _can't_.

.

.

.

Clump. Clump. Clump. Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Stiles, come on, you have— you have to eat _something_."

"Stiles, please."

"Stiles?"

Sigh. Clump. Clump. Clump.

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Click. Click. Click. Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Stiles?"

"It's Kira, uh, they're at the—the funeral. Look, we're all really worried about you and I know we don't really know each other and I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through right now— but I— you need to at least eat, Stiles."

Sigh. Click. Click. Click.

.

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"I left her a flower for you."

"I thought that would be good."

"Stiles?"

"I know you're hurting and— and I know that— well, I don't really know much actually I— Stiles, it's okay to need someone because I need you and I don't know what to do because you won't talk to anyone and I— I just don't know what to do."

.

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"STILINSKI! GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THAT ROOM AND BACK ON THE PITCH!"

Sigh.

"Stilinski, at least take a bath."

.

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.

"Stiles— Stiles you're not the only one in pain."

"My son needs you too."

"Stiles, he's been tracking down the leader. They found him yesterday. He says he's coming home with his head—well, the creepy sarcastic one did. Scott won't talk to me."

Sniff. Click. Clack. Click.

.

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It's Derek who breaks the door down. It's Derek who yanks the covers back and slaps Stiles back into consciousness. It's Derek who says "you stink worse than Peter, you crazy hermit" and throws Stiles' limp body over his shoulder. It's Derek who doesn't admit to stripping Stiles (and _doesn't_ look, he's not a pedophile) and gently depositing him into the full bathtub. It's Derek who complains about his life as he awkwardly holds Stiles' wrist and guides the hand with a bar of soap in it. It's Derek who forces water down his throat and then spends the next hour moving Stiles' jaw up and down and then forcing him to swallow.

"This is revenge for the pool incident, isn't it?"

.

.

.

Stiles' body feels better. His heart doesn't. He had a few one liners for Nurse Derek but doesn't have the energy or will to say them. Derek even prompts him a few times. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. Nothing can soothe the ache in his chest. The burning. Not even Derek bashing. That's when Derek gets really worried and drags in the big guns.

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The day Scott appears in Stiles' doorway(/is thrown there by Derek) is the day Stiles first cries. After months of nothing he explodes with tears. Scott holds him and joins in. Derek falls back on the bed in relief. He was beginning to think Stiles had died. That his body had gone into permanent shock. Thankfully he hadn't been scrubbing a dead boy this whole time. It didn't make it any better though, because no one knew if this Stiles was going to be worse.

It was.

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The chair flew across the room and straight into the television. The screen cracked as wide as his heart had.

"STILES!" Sheriff Stilinki runs into his son's room.

The wardrobe topples to the ground with one angry shove. The tears leak down his face as he flings a photo frame into the opposing wall. "SHE LEFT ME!" He screams.

The sheriff wraps his arms around his son and rocks back and forth trying to soothe him. "Why did she leave me?"

The sheriff knows what he has to do.

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"Can you do it?"

Peter watches the sheriff curiously. "Yes, but how do you expect it to work?" The sheriff furrows his eyebrows. "There are reminders of her everywhere. He'll get curious."

"What should I do?" _Not ask the psychotic killer for advice_, a voice in his head says.

"Take it all. Not just her death. Take every memory of Lydia Martin away from him."

The sheriff's phone rings to interrupt his answer.

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The sheriff walks into Lydia's bedroom and watches his son tracing his finger over a pattern on the purple bedspread.

"Stiles—"

"I know." He says, surprising his father completely. "But I needed to smell her one last time."

.

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"Was it my fault?" Stiles rips the crust off the sandwich. "Truthfully."

Malia shakes her head and looks Stiles right in the eye, tears starting to form in hers. "She jumped in front of me."

He looks at her and hates her.

He hugs her and lets it go.

(He doesn't have room to feel anything besides pain anyway.)

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And just when everything's okay, it's not. He wakes up, stretches, yawns, checks the time, checks the date, tells himself it's okay. March 19th. He sits up. March 19th. He rubs his forehead. March 19th, that sounded famil—

_Lydia Martin_

_Daughter and Friend_

_March 19th, 1997 - July 7th, 2014_

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Her grave is under an apple tree. Some apples have fallen onto it. He tries to remember why he got out of the car. He kneels down, avoiding the dirt that's laid over— it's laid over— and picks up an apple. He looks up to find a place to put the half rotten apples and spots a cat. A cat with fur as red as the apple in his hand and eyes as black as the rotten bits. Its little whiskered lips twitch upward—it looks satisfied somehow—and then it disappears. Literally. He blinks and shakes his head.

It was probably never there.

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End file.
